Auburn Prison

This view of the Auburn Prison looks nicer than any of my college dorms, and I lived in some pretty nice ones. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a swimming pool out back. If the food's good too, this could be a pleasant place to spend the summer.

The card was written in 1912 with the following message:

Auburn, NY

8.-9.1912

I am having a nice time

Clarence is coming up to morrow we will stay unti Monday. I am encloseing a few views that I thought would interest you.

From Katie Tarbox
I have a number of cards from various Tarbox family members. It's a great name.

Oh, I just found another card of the Auburn prison. This one shows the inner courtyard. I don't see a pool, but I know it must be somewhere.

And there's more.  Did you know that the Auburn prison was the first facility to use the striped black and white prison uniforms? It was also the first prison to introduce the electric chair. The "Auburn System" was copied by many other prisons; it included hard labor and solitary confinement. I guess this wasn't the summer camp I imagined. Cayuga Museum director, Eileen McHugh has just published a history of the prison entitled Auburn Correctional Facility. You can read more about it here.

Central City, Colorado

Central City was a gold-rush town, founded in 1859, the same year a gold-bearing vein was found in Gregory Gulch. The town's population quickly grew from 598 in 1860 to 2,360 in 1870.  Many Chinese lived and worked in Central City during the gold rush, but most returned to China afterward.  The population peaked in 1900 at 3,114, and then diminished rapidly after that as the gold was exhausted. In 1980, the population of Central City was only 329.

There are still some historic buildings in Central City, such as the Central City Opera House, which once hosted Buffalo Bill and Lillian Gish.  If you'd like to read more about Central City and its history, visit the Legends of America website.

The architect who steals my covers visited Central City in the 1980s. He said it was a beautiful place, albeit a ghost town. Gambling was introduced in the 1990s, bringing with it a lot of ugliness, including tour buses, traffic jams, and a four-lane parkway to transport gamblers from the Interstate. Tragically, the building height limitations on undeveloped land have also been eliminated, presumably to encourage the development of more casinos.  Previously the limitation was 53 feet, so as not to overshadow the quality of the historic town.

Here's another card, probably from the 1940s:

The back of the first card, the real-photo card, is very light, but the EKC on the stamp box indicates it was printed sometime between 1930 and 1950.

Longacre Square, Times Square - New York

 

Longacre Square, originally the home of many carriage makers, was named after London's Long Acre Street, which was the center of the carriage-making trade in London.  In April of 1904, the name was changed to Times Square in honor of the Times Building which was being built there.  Building began on the Times Building in 1903 and was completed in 1905. The picture for this card was taken from the Times Building, so it would have been published in 1903 to early 1904, since at that time it was still called Longacre Square.

Here's the same view circa 1950:

The message written to George Olney in 1954 says:

Hi George -

Hope you had a good time, + maybe you can tell the other kids about it.

Loving Uncle Tom

And here's a view of the famous building that precipitated the name change:

The card was sent to Hazel Hare in McCook, Nebraska in1906: